


I'd Stare at You

by SlytherinHowl



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artists, Awkward Romance, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Happpy Birthday Fanoftheknight!, Marriage Proposal, Museums, Photography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:20:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27021133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlytherinHowl/pseuds/SlytherinHowl
Summary: In a room full of art...
Relationships: Jorah Mormont/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 10
Kudos: 38





	I'd Stare at You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fanoftheknight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanoftheknight/gifts).



> This is my humble birthday gift to my good friend fanoftheknight, who deserves all the best things in the world. I hope you enjoy this light fluffy story (even though it's probably more my style than yours, but I wrote it with love). All the best to you today, my friends <3

Jorah Mormont bites the cap of his black pen as per usual, knowing the sole focus of his attention would scold him if she saw him biting his fingernails instead. He knows what she would say if she caught him scribbling her lines and shades in his battered notebook again, when he could be strolling through a gallery of paintings, old and new. 

"In a room full of art, Jorah, you stare at me?" She has said many a time, swatting his arm with the hand not holding her Nikon camera. Then teasingly, oblivious of the fact it stings. "Quit being a creep." 

Of course he would stare at her. Jorah Mormont would fill a thousand National Portrait Galleries with Daenerys Targaryen. The waves of her hair falling down her back, her sweat-dotted brow in the equatorial sun, the dimples of her smile when she plays with the children she meets when she travels, her bright eyes looking at the world through the lens of her professional camera. Maybe then he could stare at her all he wanted without getting red in the face under her gaze. She looks like a marble statue out of one of his ancient Greek art books, both Aphrodite and Medusa at once. 

She stares too. Not so much at him, he thinks, but stares and smiles and notices the little quirks and mannerisms of people, as if she was at a photo shoot and they were her models, each f them the most beautiful one she had ever seen. That is what makes her work unique. Daenerys can shift around the pain of humanity and find the spark of life in everyone, that thing worth living for. 

"Every person has a smile worth seeing, Jorah."

His cynicism would usually disagree, but whenever he brings it up she just finds another way to explain to him why he is wrong. She was the one who grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him away from his own sorrow and misfortune, sat him down, called him an idiot and crowned him a Person when he thought his share of happiness had run out. Jorah crowned her so many things that very moment that if he were to read all her titles in his book, he would run out of breath. 

His notebooks are filled with her. From things she said to full paintings he's done of her in watercolour to rough sketches he doodles down when she is not looking, his lesson plans and private notes are still adorned with Daenerys. She knows it and finds it endearing, but she can't miss a good opportunity to tease him. 

"Not drawing me like one of your French girls, I hope," she says from behind me, smiling mischievously at seeing him blush and stammer. "Come along, I want to get to the photography section."

Jorah's words find their way around his mouth again, after being squeezed in his throat in a bout of nervousness. "Your work should be here too, Daenerys. The National Gallery is missing out." 

She shrugs while they walk around, but is pleased nonetheless. "You know I don't want my pictures in the hands of the government."

"They're not exactly in the hands of the government, the Gallery is managed by a charitable body-" 

"Oh, you know I don't care about the politics behind it. At the end of the day, it's still the British government. You as an art historian specialised in Greek and Etruscan art know just how much has been looted by British archaeologists and wrongly acquired. I don't want my art sitting next to some stolen mask from Congo, metaphorically speaking."  
Jorah smiles at her assertiveness but doesn't resist the urge to jab at her a little bit. "You win a Pulitzer and get picky." 

Daenerys huffs and sticks her tongue out to him. Jorah laughs with gusto, a rare sight, especially in public. With her quick eye and cat-like reflexes, Daenerys whips her camera around and snaps a shot of him with his eyes closed and his mouth stretched out in a grin, a sweet, candid picture she definitely would have taken her time to develop if she had taken it with her analogical Canon. 

"Oh, come on, Daenerys, delete it," he says embarrassedly. 

"No. You have your sketchbook, I have my pictures. An eye for an eye." 

"My drawings are...more flattering than your pictures," Jorah says a little too soon, but only realises what his words would lead to when her mischievous smile returns to dimple her face once more. 

"Fine. Show me yours and I'll show you mine." The people around in the room give them bewildered looks and Daenerys smiles on. 

"Daenerys..." He groans, ready to be swallowed by the ground. 

"Let's go to the café. I could do with a cup of tea and some cheesecake I saw on the way in." 

Jorah tags along like an obedient pup, dreading silently the fact that the painstaking detail he puts into each and every one of her small portraits, even the rushed sketches, might freak her out somehow and scare Daenerys away from whatever is it their relationship is. She has never said a word about them and he has never dared ask. Her clothes colour up an entire drawer in his closet, the keys to both her flat and her photography studio hang quietly in his key ring, yet Jorah is always convinced she is a pleasant dream that he is sure to wake up from. 

At the café she orders them both tea, the cheesecake for her and a panna cotta for him. She eyes him over the rim of her teacup and he relents. 

"Fine, I'll show you," he says with a huff and hands her the leather-bound notebook. 

She takes it with care and holds his gaze while she opens it, then turns her eyes to the yellowed pages, stained with a multitude of substances, from black ink to coffee to what she hopes is red wine and not blood. Daenerys sees herself captured in a thousand different ways. Every subtle movement of her lips, every way her hair frames her face, every wrinkle of her nose is there, in the finest pieces or in the roughest sketches. Even in his experiment with cartoon styles. She smiles and smiles and smiles at how she dots almost every inch of the notebook that hasn't been taken up by, well... notes. Daenerys has ironically never taken a self-portrait where she is smiling, but there's no need; she sees her own smile reflected back at her, made permanent by Jorah's skilful pen. 

She closes the notebook without looking up at him, instead focusing on flipping through the folders in her camera. When she hands it to him, Jorah takes the camera warily, not sure what else he expects to see other than the silly picture of him she has just taken. His eyebrows shoot far up in his forehead when he sees that the pictures in her camera go way beyond a quick shot of him laughing. He sees black and white shots of his profile bathed in light, his hands in his hair and holding his trusty notebook, then coloured one, where the blue of his eyes and the red hairs of his beard shine, details that make him not believe the man he sees is the same one that greets him in the mirror. Is this how she sees him, with this much grace and interest? 

"Those are unedited. I need to get them into my laptop and start adjusting them."

"Daenerys, they are... beautiful. I can't believe this is me," he says in a breathless whisper. 

"I could say the same thing about your drawings, Jorah. They make me feel... like a queen or a goddess. I'd seen some before, so I knew, but the effect is still the same," she murmurs, looking at the drawings affectionately. Beside her, a weight is lifted from Jorah's shoulders and he looks at her pictures again. 

"When did you take them?"

"On various occasions. I t seems I am also guilty of staring at you in rooms full of art," she says, taking the camera from him and placing it neatly on top of the notebook. 

Daenerys turns to him and laces her fingers with his. "I've always wanted to open a small gallery for myself, but I always postponed it, I could never find the strength. But you are my strength. I want you by my side in this. Would you consider being my partner? Those drawings need to be seen by the world, Jorah. They need a home where more people will love them as much as I do. Does that sound good to you?" 

Jorah feels like he is dreaming again. His body sits at the café, but his soul ascends to a higher realm. His hands tingle. His head feels light. His tongue works too fast for his rational mind to catch up and he blurts out what he has always meant to hide from her. 

"Would you marry me?" Only when her eyes widen does he realise his mistake. She pulls away slightly and he sucks in a desperate breath. "I'm, I'm sorry, Daenerys, God I-I, I'm so sorry, I didn't, I-" 

"For someone who always has everything well-planned and under control, you made a faux-pas here." There is a playful glint in her eyes, but as soon as she notices he might be hyperventilating, she adds quickly, trying to turn things around. "The ring, Jorah. You know I like my jewellery." 

"Oh." Is all he says. 

"Oh," she says back, now afraid she made things worse. 

They look at each other in the most awkward of silences, both heads raking themselves to come up with a solution that will make things better. In a strike of joyous brilliance, Jorah snatches the notebook from the table and starts scribbling furiously. Daenerys tries to see what he is doing, but he turns away from her and hunches over his work like a bear protects its cub. Jorah looks slightly panicked when he rips a page from the notebook, folds it and hands it to her. 

Daenerys is almost afraid of opening it. She wonders if their lack of communication about their relationship has finally driven him to the edge. She takes a deep breath and unfolds the page slowly. When she sees what's inside, her frown eases into a delighted grin. The tiny black dragon on the page holds a thin band adorned with two pearls in its paws. Under him, read the words " _Silver or Gold?_ " in rushed handwriting. Daenerys presses the drawing to her chest and lets out the laugh that has been building in her chest since opening the page. 

"Silver," she says, wiping the tears while her shoulders still shake. All the tension in his shoulders leaves his body and Jorah allows himself to laugh with her. 

"I never thought I would have a moment in my life that was straight out of a romantic comedy." 

"Life does imitate art sometimes."

"My life becomes art with you, Jorah." 

"And you breathe life into my art, Daenerys."


End file.
